


Scorpion

by typhe



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Angst, Healing, LHM, M/M, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-03
Updated: 2011-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-25 16:31:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do I need to start treating every conversation as if it could be the last one we ever have?  (Kyree caverns, Stef POV).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scorpion

**Author's Note:**

> I chose not to tick the warning box for noncon here, because it's only mentioned in passing - but yeah, noncon is mentioned in passing in this fic, though it's mostly about self-harm /keeps digging
> 
> The terrible title is a holdover from a cavernfic I wrote in 2002-2003 and then deleted from the internet earlier this year. This isn't a rewrite (yet). But it is more cavernfic. And I'm considering it incomplete in case there is more cavernfic.

I only feel it for a split second. Like a scream cut short. I gasp and feel my knees grate against rock, feel myself clasping at my own wrists, feeling heat - pain - searing through my nerves, and _past_ me -

It passes as abruptly as it came, leaving me reeling and alone. I get to my feet, feeling like I just ran into a wall.

Again.

I've never been more frustrated or terrified or lonely than I've been in the last two days, but I am not about to quit trying no matter what just happened, so I'm running faster than I can think, bare feet dancing over wet stone. Something inside me still knows where to find him, and I'll listen to it. Have to find him, do something, _anything_. Not just stay here and keep breathing. My head feels so heavy that if I were to slip into a spring, I think I'd drown.

I find him in a tiny nook near a fierce stream of water - kneeling in the same way I found myself kneeling only minutes ago, staring up at me with wide, numb eyes, and for a second our connection snaps back into place and I can hear it all inside, and outside, pain a thick mixture of present and remembered, shame crushing and constant, a shaft of jagged hate screaming for a way out - or in -

My feet slip under me, and I glance down at them and oh gods even in this kaleidoscope of soul lights I can tell that isn't water.

I almost choke on my own exhausted gasp, find the wits to stick my head back out into the cavern and yell _"Hyrryl!"_ Someone must have heard that. Someone. Please. He needs a healer - I pull my shirt off without thinking, drop down beside him and grab at his curled hands. He flinches, my touch sending him burrowing for the wall. "Van, please -" One sleeve drops, and the linen blooms red. "Your - your hands. I need to -" I reach out and press my crumpled shirt over one of his wrists. "Please?" He's frozen, shaking like a rabbit in a trap. Oh great gods, what can I do if he won't even let me stop him _bleeding_ -

What can _I_ do? Take away the pain.

And now I'm singing, dropping my blood-soaked shirt and raising my head and singing. It'll take away the pain. That, and work the first trick every gifted one learns - it's just a lullaby, some old song about the sun taking its rest, something children know the first verse of and never hear the rest. Take the pain, send him to sleep. He stares down at his hands. Jolted. Frustrated. Like I wrenched something from them that he needed. That pain. His lips move, but I'm still singing.

His eyes close, and I hear his breathing relax. He knows what I'm doing - after all the times I've soothed him back to sleep after a nightmare, he must know. Either he's too rattled to block me out, or he's giving up and _letting me_ do this.

I keep my distance, singing all the while, until I sense he's deeply enough asleep that I can touch him, and then I shuffle forward, gingerly taking his hands and pressing them together over my makeshift pad, pulling the sleeves around his arms to keep it in place. Can't tie it, not if I want him to sleep peacefully. Gods, remember when we used to do that for fun? I brush against something on the floor, pick it up.

One of my knives.

My voice trails off. I sag, brow resting against the back of one knee. Knew it. Hadn't thought it through, but I knew. The worst part is that I'm not even surprised.

I clean it off on my already-ruined breeches, wondering how many others he's squirrelled away - godsdammit, if he wants to hurt himself it's not like I could stop him, is it? I can't protect him from himself - he's far too powerful. Helpless, exhausted tears sting in my eyes - I've been stupid and useless and he's not getting better, he's getting _worse_ , and there's _nothing_ I can do to -

Hyrryl tumbles into me, warm breath catching at the scent of blood, and she shoos me aside with her nose. I duck out, and see Yfandes watching me from the other side of that stream, her eyes radiating the same useless panic that I feel. I climb into the water, letting the warmth beat against my bare skin and stained clothes, seeing my wake run red.

*

 _:That wasn't your fault.:_ Yfandes is looking sidelong at me as she sniffs the unpotable water I'm still sat in. I ignore her. She could be wrong. I let him pick a gods-damned stupid fight with me yesterday - we ate together, and then he claimed he'd slept off his wounds and it was time to get back to our journey. I told him he was being insensible, and he looked at me like I'd spat in his face. Fandes told him he shouldn't leave and she _wouldn't_ leave, and he got angry at her for taking my side over his. I shouldn't have walked away. It was pure posturing and he couldn't handle it when we saw through the cracks in his pride.

I only needed him to listen to me for just one moment. That's all I could hope for - one lucid moment where he'd _admit_ that he wasn't ready to fight again, that he needed healing and rest - and he took that hope as an insult. I told him I'd never think him weak when he was wounded, and he asked if I thought him tainted. Defective. I had to walk away, in tears, telling him _no_ all the while. I wouldn't stand there and let him accuse me of giving harbour to doubts that belonged to him alone.

Do I need to start treating every conversation as if it could be the last one we ever have?

 _I can't do this._ I don't know how. I dip my face in the water for a few seconds, letting sulphur mix with salt, feeling as if it flows through me.

*

Hyrryl returns within minutes, my shirt held between her teeth; she offers it to me, letting it drop in the stream. Another hopeless task. I set a loose rock atop it and haul myself out, the sulpher-scent I've grown used to mixing with the spilt blood that I will not. There's a little of it on Hyrryl's muzzle, and she dips her face deep in the water - I guess even the foul taste of the hot water is more palatable than human flesh. She's said she lives here because the water cleanses her and her people - not simply mundanely, but she says it keeps their natural energies flowing, takes negative forces away. Wish it worked the same for us.

More time, she always says. Patience. I sit, feet in the running water, and feel Fandes come close behind me. _:That was quick thinking of yours:_ , Hyrryl says.

"It was the only thing I could do." I'm speaking so quietly I can barely hear myself over the water. I don't want him to wake, because I don't know if I've the strength left to do it again. "H - Hyrryl -"

 _:You called me in time. He'll be well - perhaps he'll bear a scar, but no lasting harm.:_ She hesitates, and I sense her watching the both of us carefully. _:This isn't the first time, is it?:_

I don't reply. He doesn't talk much about it, so all I know of it is what little's been told to me by his scars and by other people. _:No, it isn't:_ , replies Fandes. _:It's not something he does often, though. The first time was days after I Chose him - he'd lost his first bondmate and didn't know that any human being had a care for him at all, so he wanted to die.:_ And she's _still_ angry about how that came about, fierce as any protective mother. I've seen the harm that time did to him - inside and out. _:It was a turning point - made him realise how many people were willing to fight to keep him alive. Since then, maybe once every few years, he'll become so despairing that he'll feel driven to take a knife to it.:_ She seems less surprised than I am, and condemns no one - not him, not herself, not me.

Hyrryl's words are gently reflective, like the water passing by. _:I think pain humbles us. It reassures even the most arrogant that they are mortals with limited strength, not gods. Sometimes, when one among us loses a fight, they go to the hottest pools to wash their feet and tails. The fire in those wells brings their pain from the inside to the outside.:_

Sensation-rush. I've seen a little of it at Bardic. Often from the same lost fools who take drugs. Easing pain by inflicting it.

I knew he might do this, I knew it. I can't get his wide-open eyes out of my mind. Can't forget how I found him after the ambush - tatters and mad-eyes and flesh-eating _hate_ burrowing inside him. Can't forget what I saw when she told me what had happened - I shudder, and the water ripples around my feet, flows onward.

I've been aware of what Vanyel was capable of doing to himself since the first time I saw him open his cuffs in warm spring weather - I remember seeing his hand on the neck of a lute, telling marks brushing the wood; he didn't trouble to disguise them. He's never troubled to _survive_ , and isn't shy about any of the signs of his many flirtations with the Shadow-Lover. I wanted to kiss those scars then and there.

Until now it was just - something I knew. Like knowing that he'd been lifebonded with Tylendel Freylenne. And yes, maybe scars like that turned him from a beautiful man into an irresistible one; maybe knowing he'd had a troubled life made me all the more desperate to show him something better. Maybe they were my excuse to be an arrogant fool and convince myself he needed me, and more fool me, I thought I knew what I was taking on. He let me see that there'd been times when he'd hurt himself on purpose - but - I never had to _deal with it_ before. Blackest hells, I didn't know he was going to get beaten and raped by the lowest kind of gang scum, did I?

I'm not surprised that he knifed himself. I won't judge or pity him for it. I won't walk away again. But I can't stop feeling horrified. Parts of me are _still shaking_. I never want to see that much of anyone's blood, let alone my bondmate's, let alone _at his own hands_. Great gods, _why_?

"F- Fandes," I stutter, the worst images running through my mind. "Does he - does this mean he w-wants -"

 _:No,:_ she replies, her voice feeling like stone against the inside my head. _:If he was determined to die, he could, and not even I could stop him. He's still alive because he wants to be.:_

Oh. I feel torn between hope and terror; if he wants to live then he wants to heal but gods, what if I mess something up and he changes his mind? What if he's living for duty, or revenge, rather than for himself or for us or for me? What am I going to do to keep him here?

"Well," I say, desperate to make _something_ of the bloodstains and confusion, "If the pain's on the outside, I can sing it away."

I feel Fandes nod against my neck. _:That you can. It's one way to meet him half-way.:_

I sigh and glare up at her, frustrated by her cynicism, knowing that she has no more idea how to deal with this than I do, hating how right she is. We can't do this without him. He has to bare the wound to me before I can even start trying to tend it.

He did want death once, she said. These days, I guess he'd never allow himself that much peace and quiet. But I will not allow him pain.

*

We three sit a while, not speaking, and I pull my shirt from the water and wring it out. The bloodstains have faded to the colour of old leaves under snowmelt, ragged edges running along the backs of folds. Ruined, but I don't have any others, and his don't fit me all that well. I pull it over my shoulders, in the hope it'll soon dry over my skin.

Hyrryl rolls close to the water, and slips her claws beneath the surface, meticulously cleaning them against each other. She's resting, cleansing herself - I'm sure she has better things to do than sit here beside the water with me, but while she's here I may as well stop being inert and useless and try picking her luminous lupine brain for a while, right? "Hyrryl -" She looks up at me. "What am I doing wrong?" She blinks at me slowly, looking tired and old and oh gods is there anything I can get right here? "I'm sorry," I blurt out, "I know we're a burden on you and I didn't mean to -"

 _:No. A challenge from the Star-Eyed one, perhaps. We have always avoided evil and uncleanliness, and now she gives me the chance to learn how to heal it.:_ She looks up to the globes of light above us; hers is an old clan, and a powerful one. They've gained strength from that silent path, and had little chance to share it. _:Singer, I think you can read your own mistakes. I know no more of them than you do yourself.:_

"True enough," I sigh, still hesitating to enumerate them. "I could have listened and thought more. I, I've been frantic. I know how to perform calmly even when I'm not, so I need to stop _not doing_ it. He needs shelter, and I've not been strong enough to offer it. I keep letting him get to me - I walked away from him yesterday because I was so tired of being snapped at and - I think -" I'm talking around a growing lump in my throat, "- this was my fault. I let him push me away and he must have felt like I'd deserted him." That was another way of hurting himself, I know. And he'd done it often enough before now that I should have seen it happening. He's _always_ been half-terrified of how he feels about me - I'm the part of his heart that he wears on the outside - and I should have realised that his trauma would only make that worse. But I fell for it. Every other time I've seen through it and stayed by him until he's been forced to trust in me, our bond, himself - and this one time I panicked and let him hurt himself.

I'm not doing this right, I barely know how, but all I can do is listen and learn. And, while he's asleep and can't hear me, worry my heart out. "Great gods, what can we do for him? What if there's nothing we can do for him?"

Yfandes exhales heavily, which I take for annoyance. I look up at her as she speaks. _:Bard, let me ask you this; at what point are you going to give up?:_

"Wha - what? _Never._ I couldn't -"

She meets my fierce eyes with her own. _:Makes two of us. Let him sleep, Stef.:_ She brushes her head against my own - some echo of human closeness. _:You know...usually, when he's harmed himself, he starts to pull himself together afterwards. It's like that darkest hour they speak of.:_

"Really?"

 _:Yes -:_ She looks away to the nook where he lies, and I guess he must be stirring awake. I could fix that, easy. And I shouldn't, not unless he asks me to. He can't - meet me halfway, as she says - unless I let him do as he will.

He awakens fast, like always, rolling to a defensive crouch on the unforgiving ground and looking at us, ten feet of stone and two feet of water away, on the other side of some imaginary border. He's alone in his own mental territory, walling us out.

Fandes nods her head - if she says something to him, I can't hear it - and walks away, the sound of her footsteps mingling with the flowing of the water. Hyrryl follows her silently, rested enough or seeking it elsewhere. That leaves the two of us - me and my heart's great challenge, sitting either side of the stream.

My move, I guess. "I'm sorry I made you sleep. Didn't know what else to do."

He looks into the water, as if wary of meeting my eyes. "I let you do it. I know you meant it as a kindness."

"I did." I'm glad he can see that - that I'm trying to care for him. "Can we talk about it?" I ask.

"Do I have a choice?" he replies, bitter.

"Yes, absolutely." I won't rise to it. I'll keep my voice calm and still even if I want to fall apart. "I'm not a mindhealer or an empath or anything like that. I can't make you recover from this. If you don't choose to talk to me and let me - be here for you, there's nothing I can do to heal you."

Our eyes meet, and I try my best to send him all the love and faith I have for him, for us, and I can't _lie_ with feelings this way, not how I can when I sing, so if there's a little desperation and loneliness in there I can't help it.

"Right," he says, and I sense a glimmer of light inside him - a hope, at least, of dawn.


End file.
